


A Stanza of Sparrows

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 03:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15699339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: John,he tried to say. It was nothing but a breath. It sounded like a prayer.





	A Stanza of Sparrows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MindYourOwnBismuth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MindYourOwnBismuth/gifts).



> Thank you for your amazingly wonderful words for [A Composition of Crickets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753987) on Twitter <3
> 
> This is an unofficial continuation, but can be read as a standalone.

He had won the coat in a gamble. A young, gangly teen; wet behind the ears, said the men around him. Did he even know how to play poker?

He didn’t. Hadn’t. Had watched for ten minutes, eyes unreadable, fixed on the cards splayed across the dirty table. Then, he did.

The coat had belonged to a woman. He remembered how her hair had drifted, floating around her face, stirred by the night air. A deal’s a deal, she had said.

It was too big. Sherlock didn’t mind.

Strangely, this was what replayed in his mind—not the suspect fleeing with a hairpin turn, disappearing along the back of the alleyway wall; not the brand and model of the gun that he held in his hand, a flash of metal from streetlight lamps.

A proper dry cleaner could remove the bloodstains—the thought stuck out like a sore thumb, striking its way through muddled madness—but it would be difficult to find the correct fabric. Despite how skilled or talented the tailor, the disfigurement would remain detectable.

(How very unfortunate.)

Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a scrap of rationale. Logic blurred by the defence system of the body. Each awkward, clumsy pulsation of his heart struck like a punch to his chest. Alarm bells rang faintly in the back of his head; something was very, very wrong.

Through the haze, he caught glimmers, sparks of real life: the gravel against his leg, the rough stone wall digging into his lower back. Something wet, carving a burning trail down his chest. Pain behind a fuzzy, buzzing veil.

And there was something else, too.

 _John,_ he tried to say. His mouth felt like static, barely corporeal, his throat stuffed with cotton. There was something wrong with his vision, like a phone camera filming a concert; it wavered, fading in and out of focus.

But John—John was the cynosure, and Sherlock’s eyes adjusted, struggling, honing in. Even still, he could only catch bursts.

John’s lips were a pale smudge of blurred scarlet red. They were moving, but the words were drowned out by a roaring in his ears. Glimpses, always glimpses—the last half of a word, a slipped syllable. His name, over and over.

Hands gripping his shoulders tight, pinpoints of pressure punctuating the pain. Dark blue eyes made darker by the dimness of their surroundings. Filled with some emotion—Sherlock tried to concentrate—this was important, he knew, anything involving John must be important—furrowed eyebrows, twisted features, trembling lips. Pain, grief, fear. But why?

Like a reminder, a shuddering rack of something that could only be described as freshly-formed _fire_ swept down his spine, spiking at a small, tell-tale spot in his sternum.

Oh, yes. Sherlock closed his eyes in an illogical attempt to block out the pain. He had gotten shot.

John would be furious, he thought, and then realized that it had already happened. His mind was terribly slow, groggy, drugged beneath the racing pulse and thrumming blood, fogged by the adrenaline through his veins.

There were still hands on his shoulders, tighter now. They were joined by another touch. Softer, sweeter, baby blossoms against his skin. Landing on his cheeks, over his eyelids, trailing down his jaw.

Lips.

_Kisses._

Sherlock struggled to keep up with reality. The shot had sent him all the way back.

Rapidly, scenes flicked through his mind, surfaced memories.

A clumsy, stumbling confession between moonlit trees. Requited. Kisses tasting of morning tea, a warm hand sneaking into his. A soft, fond giggle. Fingers trailing through his hair.

John. John Watson. Acquaintance—flatmate—friend—more.

Now more.

Such a shame, he thought, if he were to die after that.

Perhaps John would wear his coat, were his last thoughts as he felt himself slipping away. Despite the rip the bullet must’ve created. He would grieve, terribly, horribly. Sherlock felt guilt gnawing at the edges, a small bloom of candlelight in the centre of the fire engulfing everything else.

A siren sounded in the distance. It sounded far, far away.

-+-+-+-

He wasn’t sure what woke him up: the beeping of the monitor, the creak of a plastic chair, the throbbing pain that washed over his body in shallow, consistent waves, cresting and breaking and ebbing away with the rise and fall of his chest. (Answer D: all of the above.)

His eyes opened, were greeted with the familiar fluorescent lights of a hospital room. He turned his head, squinting through the sting. The dark shape to his left sharpened into a silhouette.

 _John,_ he tried to say. This time, it came as a sandy whisper.

John’s eyes met his; dark circles surrounding dimmed irises that brightened, if only slightly, at the sight of him.

“Welcome back,” he said. His voice was hazy and rough, uttered softly. He sounded tired.

Sherlock studied him. The slump of his shoulders, the thin, tight corners of his lips, the white knuckles around an armrest, signalled his exhaustion like a bright beacon flare. Something in his eyes glimmered, wavering.

He spoke tentatively, softly. “Are you alright?”

John laughed. It was short and bitter like wormwood. “I can’t believe you can even ask me that.”

The stabbing sensation grew to be too much. Sherlock closed his eyes, though his lips moved still. “How long was I unconscious for?”

“A while,” came the reply. The tone suggested that the vagueness of the answer was unintentional, and for once Sherlock didn’t bother for a sarcastic retort. There was a pause. “You were in and out.”

Sherlock cracked open one eyelid, peering at John with renewed attention. “You haven’t been eating.”

John smiled thinly. “I’ll live.”

Sherlock pursed his lips. It hurt.

Silence fell upon the two of them once more, punctuated only by the slight, steady beep of the monitor. It gave Sherlock a strange sort of comfort, as if hearing his own heart reassured him of his continued existence. He dismissed the thought as ridiculous.

“My coat,” he remembered.

“What about it?”

“It’s torn now,” he said. “I’ll have to take it to a tailor, but none of them have the same colour nor material. There’ll be a visible seam.”

John blinked, and then nodded. Curtly, tightly.

“Right,” he said. “Your coat.” He said the word _coat_ as if it were a curse.

“You know,” he added, almost as a follow-up, “the bullet’s going to leave a scar.”

“Hm?” Sherlock said absently. “Oh, yes, of course. I assumed.”

John spoke slowly, taking in a deep breath through his nose, as if trying to keep himself from doing something rash. Perhaps he was, Sherlock thought.

“Do you know,” John said, “how maddeningly annoying it is to love someone who doesn’t seem to give a shit about himself?” (Oh, thought Sherlock. So that was it.)

Sherlock didn’t speak.

John, seemingly having not expected him to, said, “Can you walk?”

Sherlock paused. “If I must. Why?”

John stood. “Come to the roof with me.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You never answer any of mine,” John replied, “so I think we’re even.”

Sherlock’s gaze turned pointed.

“I have something to show you,” John relented (insisted). “Come on.”

Sherlock blamed it on the painkillers. He swung his legs off the bed and stood up.

Immediately he stumbled, a hand coming to touch his forehead, coaxing off the impending headrush. John was there in an instant, an arm wrapping around his shoulders, a hissed _Careful!_ on his tongue.

Step by step, they travelled down the aisle, the dimly-lit lights giving away the late (or perhaps early, Sherlock supposed) hour. The stairs took much longer than preferable, John slowing down considerably in concern of Sherlock’s chest—which wasn’t quite serious, really, but the look on John’s face told him not to argue.

John’s footsteps halted in front of the door.

He turned to Sherlock. His lips brushed over the shell of his ear and sent a spark of electricity scuttling down Sherlock’s spine.

“Just so you know,” John murmured. “If I were there, I would’ve taken that bullet for you.”

Sherlock leaned into the touch. “I know,” he responded.

“And just so you know,” John continued, “if I ever lost you, it would destroy me. Inside and out.”

Sherlock moved to trail his lips along John’s jawline. “I know.”

“So just—keep that in mind, yeah? Be a bit more careful.”

Sherlock pulled away, looking John in the eye.

“I know,” he said. “I will.”

John smiled just the slightest. “Alright,” he said softly, and opened the door.

The outside air held the slight bite of late August, carrying the scent of summer, slowly slipping to the growing grasp of fall. The wind ruffled his hair, his hospital gown gently billowing.

Sherlock stepped into the open. He turned around to look at John, opening his mouth.

The words died in his throat, extinguished like a wick in a breeze.

“The minutes after you got shot were the worst minutes of my life,” John said. His eyes were fixed on the small, velvet-black box in his hands; cradled, hands cupped, like something precious (and it was—oh, it _was—)_ “I thought, for a moment, just a moment—I thought it was over, that you had finally stepped too far, gone over the edge.” A tremor leached into his voice. “I couldn’t—I couldn’t wait any longer. I—” He broke off, raised his eyes to Sherlock helplessly. There was a wild tinge to them, something desperate skirting along the edges of his gaze, as he looked at Sherlock and tried to tell him everything his words wouldn’t tell.

Sherlock’s chest was pounding. It ached, throbbed, complained with the ferocity of all his pains; but a surge of pure golden sunlight streamed through him, overshadowing it all.

 _John,_ he tried to say. It was nothing but a breath. It sounded like a prayer.

He reached out—fingers trembling—and opened the box.

A thin silver band. No engravings, no embeddings. It was candid to the point of commonplace, unglamourous to the extent of bluntness. It wasn’t flashy, nor was it grand; it was honest. Plain and simple, like stating facts.

He slipped it onto his finger. Against all logic, it seemed to burn, to warm his hands, heat radiating from the metal band.

He looked up to John and saw the universe in his eyes, shining galaxies and shimmering supernovae. Stories to be reread and rewritten, untold tales to be spun.

John swallowed and closed the box, slipping it back into his pocket. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“Is that a yes, then?” he whispered.

Sherlock’s lips twitched, then spread into a smile, tinged with disbelief and laced with an uncontrollable joy. He saw that same smile make its way up onto John’s face.

For a moment, they stood still. Wordlessly smiling, feeling like schoolboys, giddy and reckless. Chests overflowing with sunshine.

Sherlock turned his gaze to the roof. The cityscape of London was etched across an early morning’s candy-floss sky, a scant smattering of stars scattered across like fading freckles over pale skin. Below, a criss-crossing of street grids, a stray black cab.

John drew an arm around Sherlock and gently pulled him in. Sherlock’s hand found John’s, fingers twining and lacing together with ease, puzzle pieces slotting together. The light from a streetlight bounced off the silver; it shone brilliantly.

The thought solidified in Sherlock’s mind. This was, without a doubt, what the two of them were meant to be.

John rested his head on Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock turned his face to John’s hair and breathed in wool, coffee, and cheap shampoo.

Beneath them, a car horn honked. The Bell tower tolled—one, two, three, four, five, six. A single lone birdcall rang through the air.

They stood and watched as the rest of London gradually stirred and came to life, the space around them swirling with unspoken words, confessions, promises, that both of them could hear.


End file.
